September 8, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️
- London-based firm ETC Group announced it would support a Proof of Work version of Ethereum.
- Binance US is enabling ETH staking with a 6% annual percentage yield.
- Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital will hold an asset auction on September 13.
- The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation alleged that Celsius misled investors.
- Federal Reserve official Michael Barr said that crypto needs similar regulatory oversight to traditional bank activities.
- A hacker stole $370,000 from DeFi staking protocol Nereus Finance.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- The National Basketball Association (NBA) partnered with European NFT platform Sorare to develop a fantasy basketball game.
- FTX US and GameStop launched a partnership to collaborate on e-commerce and online marketing initiatives.
- Financial regulators in South Korea want to integrate security tokens into the country’s capital market regulations.
The $$$ Corner…
- Tesseract, a Web3 energy startup, raised $78 million.
- Gaming startup Gameplay Galaxy garnered $12.8 million in a seed funding round.
- Crypto miner Bitdeer delayed a $4 billion SPAC deal again.
- Omni, a Web3 wallet, closed an $11 million round at a $50 million valuation.
- Spice AI, a Web3 data platform, raised $13.5 million in a seed round.
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
Coinbase Posts a Governance Proposal on MakerDAO’s Forum
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase posted a governance proposal on MakerDAO’s forum to offer the protocol $24 million in yearly revenue.
MakerDAO is a decentralized protocol that enables users to mint the stablecoin DAI after they provide enough in assets as collateral.
Coinbase proposed that MakerDAO transfers $1.6 billion of USDC to Coinbase Prime, its institutional platform, in exchange for a 1.5% annual yield. This yield accounts for $24 million a year.
The funds would come from Maker’s Peg Stability Module, and Coinbase is asking for 33% of the total PSM, which is Maker’s mechanism to allow users to swap a given collateral type for DAI at a fixed rate, as explained in the protocol’s documentation.
The proposal comes at the same time as Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDAO, was proposing to reduce the protocol’s real world asset exposure (which includes USDC), in order to become more resilient against sanctions and regulations. In a post published on August 26, Christensen explained his case to follow “the path of decentralization.” However, the Coinbase plan could push Maker in a different direction.
The community appears to be divided on the issue. On the one hand, a pseudonymous user called adcv, a member of Maker’s strategic finance core unit, seems to be in favor of Coinbase’s proposal. Adcv said that Maker’s balance sheet is underinvested, which “reduces the protocol’s ability to take risk and its attractiveness as a stablecoin.”
On the other hand, Chris Blec, one of MakerDAO’s recognized delegates, disagrees. “A vote for this proposal is a vote to place the entire fate of DAI and MKR in the hands of Coinbase, a publicly-traded corporation that does not have aligned interests with the not-so-decentralized MakerDAO,” he said on the forum.
Recommended Reads
- Glassnode’s The Week On-Chain Newsletter on Bitcoin
- The Babylonians on MEV and Manifold
- Alex Valaitis on Cosmos
On The Pod…
Arthur Hayes, cofounder of BitMex, discusses how he’s trading the Merge, the impact of macroeconomic policy in the markets, his career as a writer, and much more. Show highlights:
- why Arthur initially thought Ethereum was worthless
- why Arthur thinks that a successful Merge is understated and why this is a valid reason for hedging
- why he thinks an Ethereum proof of work chain won’t succeed and how Arthur will trade ETHPoW
- why LDO, Lido’s token, is a riskier bet but has more potential gains
- whether the Merge affects BTC’s narrative as digital gold and whether the inflation hedge theory of Bitcoin still holds
- why Bitcoin is a measure of USD liquidity and why the Fed rates don’t matter as much as everyone thinks
- what Arthur believes the impact of a potential US recession would be on the crypto markets
- how the credit cycle works and how it repeats again and again
- Arthur’s method for identifying good projects to invest in
- whether BTC is money and the religious aspect of the Bitcoin culture
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
